In a move condemned by
critics as the height of cynicism, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and several
senior cabinet ministers announced re-approval of the C$9.3-billion
Trans Mountain pipeline expansion Tuesday afternoon, not 24 hours after their
government pushed a climate emergency resolution through the House of Commons.

The announcement was greeted
by a flood
of criticism from fossil interests that fought so hard for the decision but
seemingly refused to take the win, and immediately
triggered the first of what might be a series of new lawsuits against the
project.

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“The federal
government’s decision to buy the pipeline and become the owner makes it
impossible to make an unbiased, open-minded decision,” said Chief Leah
George-Wilson of the Vancouver-area Tsleil-Waututh First Nation. “After
consultation with our community and our council, we will be appealing this
decision to the Federal Court of Appeal.”

“This is like declaring
war on cancer and then announcing a campaign to promote smoking,” said Patrick
McCully, energy program director at the Rainforest Action Network. “But
this is far from a done deal. First Nations and Canadian environmentalists will
continue to fight this project, and their international allies will support
them in whatever way they can.”

“The federal government
has signed off on as much as an additional 15 million tonnes of carbon,” said
Environmental Defence Executive Director Tim Gray. “This is irresponsible at a
time when Canada is drifting
further away from meeting our Paris climate commitment, and inconsistent
with the climate emergency that was declared only
yesterday.”

“The reality is that the
government can put Canada on the path to a safe climate future and fulfill its
legal responsibility to protect endangered killer whales, or it can push this
pipeline through. It cannot do both,” said Ecojustice Nature Director
Margot Venton.

With the widely-expected
decision, the federal cabinet “affirmed the National Energy Board’s conclusion
that, while the pipeline has the potential to damage the environment and marine
life, it’s in the national interest and could contribute tens of billions of
dollars to government coffers and create and sustain thousands of jobs,” CBC
reports.

“Beyond approving the
project, Trudeau also committed to directing every single dollar the federal
government earns from the pipeline—which, when it’s built, is estimated to be
some $500 million a year in federal corporate tax revenue alone—to investments
in unspecified clean energy projects,” the national broadcaster adds. “Any
proceeds from the eventual sale of the pipeline will also be earmarked for
projects that would help with the transition away from fossil fuels to cleaner
sources of energy.”

“We need to create
wealth today so we can invest in the future,” Trudeau said. “We need resources
to invest in Canadians so they can take advantage of the opportunities
generated by a rapidly changing economy, here at home and around the world.”

The PM repeated the frequent
claim that Canada needs access to oil markets in Asia to balance out the United
States as its only major buyer for oil. “As we’ve seen over the past few
years, anything can happen with our neighbours to the south,” he said.
“Right now, we’re prisoners to the American market.”

CBC says the government is
open to selling up to 100% of the project to First Nations, Métis, or Inuit
buyers, and will soon begin meeting with potential investors. Meanwhile,
despite the remaining permits and regulatory hurdles facing the pipeline, and the
certainty of new legal challenges, a federal official said pipeline
construction would start sometime this year.

“There’s six months left
in 2019 and I think it’s fair to say shovels will be in the ground in
2019,” the official said, speaking on background. “Plans are being
drafted up, regulators are ready to move forward.”

Alberta Premier Jason Kenney immediately
called for an aggressive construction schedule. “This second approval of
the Trans Mountain pipeline isn’t a victory to celebrate, it’s just another
step in a process that has frankly taken too long,” he told
media. “And that’s why we’ll measure
success not by today’s decision, but by the beginning of actual construction,
and more importantly, by completion of the pipeline.”

Provincial opposition leader
Rachel Notley said she hoped Kenney’s United Conservative Party would be able
to hold onto the support for the project her previous New Democrat government
worked to create. “My concern is that the UCP’s plan to attack all that is
environmentalist will actually potentially reverse the support we were able to
grow for this project in B.C.,” she said. “Instead of focusing on anger
and division,
they need to continue to build the consensus that we have been successful in
building over the course of the last four years.”

British Columbia Premier John
Horgan acknowledged
Ottawa’s authority to approve the project and said he would focus on protecting
his province from the potentially devastating impact of an oil spill [or tank
farm fire—Ed.]. “I believe it’s my job as the premier of British
Columbia to always be vigilant to protect those things that matter to British
Columbians, and I’ll continue to do that,” he said.

“We know that British
Columbians continue to be deeply concerned about the consequences of a seven-fold
increase in tanker traffic in the Salish Sea,” added B.C. Environment
Minister George Heyman. “We will not abandon our responsibility to protect
our land and our water.” Vancouver Mayor and former federal MP Kennedy
Stewart, who spoke alongside coastal Indigenous leaders opposed to the project,
said the city would do “everything in our power” to support local
First Nations in court.

Federal NDP leader Jagmeet
Singh “added his voice to the chorus of opposition,” CBC says, while Green leader
Elizabeth May called the promise to reinvest Trans Mountain proceeds in clean
energy projects a “cynical bait-and-switch that would fool no one.”

“If you’re serious about
fighting climate change, you invest public funds in renewable energy. You don’t
invest them in a bitumen pipeline,” May added. “And there’s no
guarantee that this pipeline will ever turn a profit, anyway.”

The final outcome of the
government’s re-approval process “was essentially a foregone conclusion”, CBC says.
But it wasn’t clear whether cabinet would attach new regulatory conditions to
the project, after hiring retired Supreme Court justice Frank Iacobucci and a
team of 60 consultants to consult Alberta and B.C. First Nations and Métis on
ways to mitigate the pipeline’s impact.

An official said that led to
the “unprecedented” decision to strengthen six of the 156 conditions the
National Energy Board (NEB) had attached to the project and add eight new “accommodation
measures” to address Indigenous concerns. The net result, from Ottawa’s point
of view: stronger marine and emergency response plans with a more robust
Indigenous role, a Salish Sea Initiative to reduce the impact of increased
tanker traffic on the threatened orca population off the west coast, and a
Quiet Vessel Initiative to reduce noise pollution.

Now, the Crown corporation
that owns the project “will have to work with the NEB to finalize the project’s
route through a series of regulatory hearings” CBC writes, and “the possibility
of further litigation from environmentalists and First Nations is always a
risk.”

In his announcement, Trudeau
promised shovels in the ground this summer, but even that wasn’t enough for opposition
leader Andrew Scheer. “I doubt his sincerity because he hasn’t actually
done anything,” Scheer said,” complaining that the PM “failed to tell Canadians
on what day construction would actually start.”

Richard Masson, a
fossil-aligned executive fellow with the School of Public Policy at the
University of Calgary, welcomed the announcement but took a more realistic view
of the path ahead. “It’s a long ways from an approval to a completed
pipeline,” he said,
noting that opponents could point to the federal government’s conflict of
interest in approving a pipeline it owns, or argue that Indigenous
consultations were inadequate.

Former Alberta cabinet
minister Gary Mar, now president of the Petroleum Services Association of
Canada, complained Ottawa had “created further roadblocks for itself by
declaring a climate change emergency the day before the approval was announced,”
CBC writes.

“It remains to be seen
whether they’ll have the commitment necessary to make sure this project goes
through to completion,” Mar said. “I won’t be optimistic until I see
it constructed.”
The Canadian Association of Oilwell Drilling Contractors
actually called Trudeau’s decision “trivial” compared to two new pieces of
legislation, Bills C-48
and C-69, due to be adopted by Parliament this week. “This industry is
on life support,” said President and CEO Mark Scholz. “Today’s announcement
does little to provide future certainty to drilling and service rig contractors
as they continue to exit the Canadian market at an alarming rate.”

4 comments

“We need to create wealth today so we can invest in the future,” Trudeau said. “We need resources to invest in Canadians so they can take advantage of the opportunities generated by a rapidly changing economy, here at home and around the world.”

In other words, we need to destroy the environment in order to protect it.

Trudeau does not seem to understand the basic science behind climate disruption: emissions are cumulative. The more GHG emissions come out of the end of that pipeline, the more CO2 in the atmosphere for the next couple centuries and the more rapid and drastic (and painful) emissions reductions must become in order for our planet to remain anything close to an inhabitable home.

“sustain thousands of jobs,” Kinder Morgan said in their own report, 50… 50 full time jobs once the pipe is built. 50 poison / pillage jobs would be allowed to threaten tens of thousands of real sustained jobs in BC alone.
When you build pipe-dreams on the promises of liars, you are settling yourself up for disappointment.
Kinder Morgan could not secure a single buyer for it’s dream when it pawned off it’s 65 year leaky one to Canadian taxpayers for NINE times it’s value when they bought it 10 years prior.. when it had a market.

Since these “unconventional fossil fuels” already usurp 7.8% out of BC’s otherwise strong GDP on a good day (Stats Can – BIV) there really is #NoMoreExcuses to prop up this antiquated and unnecessary social, ecological and economic pariah.

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Construction challenges, steadfast opposition from landowners along the route, shocking safety and health risks at two tank farms, and the looming risk of construction “man camps” near B.C. Indigenous communities ...